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But like a hamburger flipping endlessly on a grill, each turn of a calendar page of late has brought more punishing heat to the Midwest, the South and even the ocean-cooled coasts.        </p><p>
The heat wave has been particularly unrelenting in <a title="Wichita heat" href="http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/">Wichita, Kan.,</a> where the temperature first hit 100 this year on May 9, the earliest ever recorded. And for 20 more days, the temperature has passed that milestone — it reached 101 on Tuesday and is expected to remain near or above that mark for the next week, according to the National Weather Service.        </p><p>
But if you really want to know how hot it is, head to Michael Rausch’s farm outside of Wichita, where for the first time in his 57 years, he is wearing shorts as he walks his fields and milks his cows.        </p><p>
“I’m out there with my white legs and boots on, and it looks silly,” he said on Tuesday. “But I don’t care what people think. I’m just trying to stay cool.”        </p><p>
Other signs can be found at <a title="Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers" href="http://www.freddysfrozencustard.com/">Freddy’s Frozen Custard</a>, where the air conditioner cannot keep up with the heat and the employees cannot keep up with the orders; or at the city parks, where fully clothed adults stroll into the sprinklers alongside children because at some point, long past, cool is preferable to dry; or at baseball diamonds, where the position of catcher has been abandoned altogether rather than forcing children to don the extra gear.        </p><p>
“Take your hair dryer, turn it on high, turn it on hot and turn it into your face,” said Ross Viner, head of Drums Across Kansas, who is already preparing for ways to keep a thousand students in itchy uniforms cool when they arrive for an annual marching band competition next week. “That is what Wichita is like right now.”        </p><p>
Though no meteorologist will dispute that it is uncomfortably hot right now, it is certainly not the hottest summer on record.        </p><p>
For this summer to earn those bragging rights, temperatures would have to remain at about their current levels through the end of August, which meteorologists say is unlikely. Even the most sun-baked places like Wichita would have a long way to go to trump records (50 triple-digit days in 1936).        </p><p>
“This heat wave is hot, but we’ve seen heat waves like this in the last 10 years,” said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for Weather Underground. He noted that last month had been only the 26th hottest June in the past 117 years. “It’s notable but not extreme.”        </p><p>
The heat does have real consequences, of course, prompting the <a title="heat advisories" href="http://www.weather.gov/">National Weather Service</a> to issue heat warnings across much of the country. So in many places, children are being taken to movies and bowling alleys rather than to parks and soccer fields. Fans are being distributed to low-income families without air conditioning, and cooling centers have opened for those in need.        </p><p>
In Kansas, there have been no reports of heat-related deaths, a state spokeswoman said. But there are concerns about an economic toll. Ranchers say cows are eating less — lowering beef and milk production. The ranchers are also worried about a replay of last year when hundreds of cows died because of heat. More than 4,000 turkeys reportedly died at a poultry farm over the weekend. Farmers note that the heat is hurting corn and other crops already strained by a long drought.        </p><p>
“It’s been getting worse every day,” said David Widmar, an economist with the Kansas Department of Agriculture. “There have been reports of damage across the state.”        </p>

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